I don’t talk about dubs much, mostly because I haven’t seriously watched one since Samurai Champloo‘s (amazing) dub. I don’t even bother playing Japanese video games with English audio either (nowadays I don’t really play localized JRPG’s that lack a dual audio option). I do like a few of them, but in general… I just don’t really care for them. Unless they veer into alternate adaptation territory (which hasn’t happened that much after the 90’s), it’s not like I have a deep hatred for them or anything. I just tend to find the typical voice performances and overall Japanese-to-English script mediocre. But I do get curious every now and then and check them out for kicks.

Okay, so I’m back to wrap up the Fate/stay night Unlimited Blade Works post I started ages ago.

Instead of squeezing in the VN’s original epilogue at the end of the previous episode, Ufotable did a great thing by producing an entire extra episode with new material depicting what happens after the original route, alongside the remaining source material. As a result, I think episode 25 in itself is worth watching for readers of the visual novel regardless if you think the rest of the show is a bad adaptation or not (I personally thought it was great, but it was certainly a bit shaky here and there).

-I am the bone of my sword-体は剣で出来ている。-Steel is my body and fire is my blood-血潮は鉄で心は硝子。 -I have created over a thousand blades-幾たびの戦場を越えて不敗。-Unaware of Loss- ただの一度の敗走もなく、-Nor aware of Gain- ただの一度の勝利もなし。 -Withstood pain to create weapons, waiting for one’s arrival-担い手はここに孤り 剣の丘で鉄を鍛つ。 -I have no regrets. This is the only path- ならば、わが生涯に意味は不要ず-My whole life was UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS-この体は、無限の剣で出来ていた。

We’ve arrived at the “final” episode of Unlimited Blade Works, and thus, the real battle begins. Two owners, two “one-trick ponies”, one Faker. Was it able to satisfy me as a reader of the original visual novel? Find out after the jump.

Fake Assassin’s battle with Saber here is pretty damn disappointing, with how quickly it all went down. We didn’t even get to hear an anime rendition of Shippu no Kenshi, “Sasaki Kojirou”‘s own theme, in the anime. Dammit Ufotable.

It’s sad because this is the only route where Fake Assassin feels remotely relevant to the plot. He gets killed off-screen (most likely by Gilgamesh) in Fate and gets superseded by True Assassin (Hassan) in Heaven’s Feel. It’s a shame Ufotable didn’t give him much of a bangin’ exit.

Losing the sex scene from the original visual novel isn’t much of a loss, in my opinion. With Realta Nua, Type-Moon likes pretending that the H-scenes in the original PC version never happened. And they honestly aren’t that necessary in Fate and Unlimited Blade Works. They only ever have a “significant” presence in Heaven’s Feel.

I just wished it was more… romantic though. Not that jackhammerin’ is very romantic, but just saying. For the record, Nasu did not write the sex scenes in Tsukihime (oysters!) or Fate/stay night. I cannot stress how annoying that misconception is. (Okay, it is kind of funny.)

Speaking of romance, love how they added Rin’s reason for falling for Shirou directly from Heaven’s Feel.

And here marks the anime’s ending of Shirou’s epic therapy session. There were bumpy moments before this episode that made me doubt how they were going to handle the most emotional fight of Unlimited Blade Works, but in the end, Ufotable managed to pull through.

Alright, I’m back from Fanime 2015. Unfortunately, I’ve come back to a horde of school projects I’ve neglected in favor of my special once-a-year geek-fest, so for now I’ll just go over the merch I spent my moolah on this year and share the rest of my Fanime 2015 experience later.

This was from an ANN review of episode 19 of Fate/stay night Unlimited Blade Works, and no, I’m not going to link to it. If you really want to read that review, look it up yourself, although I suggest not to. I’m not helping these clowns get revenue by linking to them on my blog.

What, so basically “bad guys shouldn’t do bad things because bad things are bad”? Shinji, who is clearly a sicko and desires Rin, should have baked her a batch of cookies instead?

Something I forgot to mention in my original post: The difference between Ufotable’s fresh Rin!Saber and Saber’s other appearances with Ufotable’s famous blue auras is miniscule to the power surge she had in the visual novel.

Spoiler

VS.

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Let me give it to you straight: I love Ufotable’s animation. With Ufotable’s talents, they could have easily showed the true extent of how much of a nightmare Saber is at her full potential the minute Rin became her source of mana, but they didn’t. Even though they’ve done quite a bit to impress me so far, they didn’t really do this scene any justice and it’s a damned shame.

Although, despite all that, they managed to do one thing right. And that is: Saber’s ponytail. Now that is excellent. (y)

I must say… this is the first episode where I’ve been truly, utterly disappointed in Ufotable. Everything about this Unlimited Blade Works episode was just a giant step down from how awesome it could have been.

Experiencing these scenes before, only done better, probably contributed to my disappointment. But it’s not like a lot of my expectations were impossible to pull off within the medium of animation. Ufotable blew my mind with almost everything before this, and to fall short when they’re just getting into the best parts of the route is kind of depressing.

I’m glad that Ufotable picked the best answers to Lancer’s questions for the absolute best Rin reactions. Jeez, it’s almost impossible for me to go back to Rin’s old VN design. Ufotable managed made her 10x cuter than she already was. I was iffy on it at first, but now I’m sold.

I swear, this adaptation feels like it’s been 50% action, with the other 50% being Rin making cute faces. (Not really, but that doesn’t sound like a bad deal either.)

Ufotable’s been doing a great job of making me like the Unlimited Blade Works anime better than the visual novel, although the soundtrack could still be a bit more… verbose. I’m scared of how underwhelming the other particular songs are going to be remixed by Fukasawa.

The following contains spoilers for people who have not read the original visual novel or any of its translations. I repeat! The following contains spoilers for people who have not read the original visual novel or any of its translations.

Fate/stay night Unlimited Blade Works second season aired over a dozen hours ago in Japan, but I only just watched it a couple of hours ago. 780p encodes are all this terrible computer can handle. /sadface

Anyways, I wasn’t disappointed by what I saw. But that can be attributed to me already having experienced Unlimited Blade Works through the VN and just wanting to see it done faithfully by talented animators. It’s Ufotable, so it doesn’t take much to satisfy in that regard, but I wonder if the hype was worth it for people who only ever watch anime? That was a pretty killer wait and the hypetrain was like over 100,000,000km. Well, whatever.

Gigantic franchises with multiple iterations often have newcomers thinking to themselves, “Where exactly do I start?”

Usually, folks assume that every franchise that contain iterations that fall into the same in-universe “timeline” require them to start at the very beginning of its chronology. And usually, all it ends up being is one big incorrect assumption.

-I am the bone of my sword-体は剣で出来ている。-Steel is my body and fire is my blood-血潮は鉄で心は硝子。 -I have created over a thousand blades-幾たびの戦場を越えて不敗。-Unknown to Death-ただの一度も敗走はなく、-Nor known to Life-ただの一度も理解されない。 -Have withstood pain to create many weapons-彼の者は常に独り 剣の丘で勝利に酔う。 -Yet, these hands will never hold anything-故に、生涯に意味はなく-So as I pray, UNLIMITED BLADE WORKS-その体は、きっと剣で出来ていた。

Fate/stay night Unlimited Blade Works is, hands down, the best anime adaptation I’ve seen of anything non-manga, period. It sounds like I’m exaggerating, but I’m not.

ufotable really outdid themselves here. Ever since their Fate/Zero adaptation, the studio’s really become Type-Moon’s little pet animation studio. For good reason, too. I don’t know if the animated openings for the original visual novel and its Réalta Nua PS2 port were done by Studio DEEN or some other company, but it was really easy to tell that Type-Moon switched to ufotable for the Réalta Nua openings on the Vita version. That distinct animation style, that quality…

There’s really talented staff working at that animation studio, and it shows. The only other anime I’ve followed from ufotable were just OVAs and movies, such as their Tales of Symphonia and Kara no Kyoukai adaptations, which are naturally some high-quality stuff when it comes to animation. But the animation for Fate/stay night Unlimited Blade Works, a *TV series*, feels like it’s almost about the same quality. In fact, bits and pieces manage to seem just a bit more polished than even their Tales of OVAs or their openings for the Tales of games in general. Dayum, son…

If the banner change hasn’t tipped you off, I’ve been on a Fate/ kick lately.

Of all the big franchises to get hit by the so-called “dirty secondary” syndrome, I believe the Fate/ series is one that genuinely gets hit pretty hard by it. I’m not going to lie, I sound like a giant snobby prick for even using the term “dirty secondary”, but in Adaptation Land, if you’re one to actually care about media besides animation/movies enough venture into what’s often used as source material, you’ll find that the term often holds… well, some painful truth to it.

Although in Fate/stay night’s case, I blame it a little more on Studio DEEN than the fans themselves. Regardless, it’s utterly depressing seeing diehard fans of the Fate/Zero anime write off the original Fate/stay night as being inferior because of the DEEN anime and movie. I suppose ufotable’s new Fate/stay night Unlimited Blade Works anime is fixing that divide somewhat, but it’s still there to a certain degree mainly because UBW is only 1/3rd of the full experience. Plus, there are secondaries who recommend newcomers to start with F/Z, skip the Fate route – by this, they mean the DEEN anime – then watch the UBW anime (according to them, “the definitive adaptation”; it’s good, but not definitive – it’s only one route), and then after that, watch the upcoming Heaven’s Feel movie… and I’m like “no, that’s wrong, please stop for the sake of your own experience.”

While I did enjoy Fate/Zero and what it had to offer as a spin of the Fourth Holy Grail War, which was constantly and vaguely mentioned in F/sn, it’s merely a prequel at the end of the day (note: different from preceding work) meant as an expansion to an even greater tale that people are unfortunately diluting their own experience of. F/Z spoils more of F/sn than the latter does for the former, and I wish more people that are thinking of getting into the franchise had that in mind, instead of getting fed a bunch of crap from, well, dirty secondaries.

With the context and details that weren’t present in any of Studio DEEN’s animated adaptations, the visual novel is certainly one hell of a ride, even with the shoddy English fan-translation desecrating the Nasutext. I’m 21 now and dislike using the word “epic” to describe, well, anything. But here I find it the word extremely fitting, because it is fucking epic.

I mean, okay, as much as I loved it, it was far from perfect. Like the onslaught of info-dumps, diarrhea of the mouth, cooking scenes that make you hungry, etc. Art-wise, Réalta Nua PSVita should have updated the art to match Takeuchi’s current style. But the pros definitely outweigh the cons of Fate/stay night. Nasu’s world-building is excellent, so as a person who appreciates that kind of imagination in High Fantasy stories such as this, it’s no wonder that I enjoyed it so much.

Alright, enough with my unnecessarily long preambles, and onto the review!

…Illness when writing that mess aside, I don’t think it needed to be any clearer for comprehension.

I was going to do another Cardcaptor Sakura post or a Fate/stay night Unlimited Blade Works post, but in light of certain reactions to my previous Kantai Collection post from denizens of the anime community’s infamous cesspool (I say “the”, but in actuality, there are quite a few of them – pick your poison) repeatedly missing the point, I feel the need to clarify more than a few things for others who might also misunderstand the context.